While cross-cultural student voice has led to transformations in education, research is scarce about the interplay between student voice, culture, and power. For this reason, student voice informs this study to investigate the benefits and constraints of curriculum co-design with respect to teacher power and higher education culture in Iran. The researcher-teacher deployed qualitative methods for data collection: field notes, students' journals, class recordings, and open-ended questionnaires. The study presents varied findings in implementing student voice: some students took on roles as teachers, while others displayed resistance. This highlights that the way students are repositioned in education is culture-sensitive.